Thinking big and being creative could be described as Sunil Bharti Mittal’s secret. Mittal was merely 18 years old when he started showing his entrepreneurial skills. He started a cycle manufacturing unit with a small amount of capital in 1976.

Now, at the age of 51, he has indeed come a long way. Mittal owns and runs India’s leading telecom company Bharti Airtel, which has been competing for the top spot with rival Reliance. In his speech at the awards ceremony in Kiel, Mittal outlined his company's global ambitions:

“Now we are attempting to take our Indian business model global. We are in a discussion with one Telecom Company in Africa and the Middle East called MTN, put together we'll be the third largest telecom company in the world. And we believe what we have achieved in India in serving Indian population at very low cost tariffs is a model to be taken around the globe.”

Introducing push-button phones

Short in height but big in gesture and personality, with glowing eyes and full of determination, Sunil Bharti Mittal never gave up. While searching for new options in business, he came across push-button phones.

“I landed in Taipei in Taiwan and saw push button phones. Until that time we had rotary phones and only a few hundred thousand at that. I said to myself that this will work.”

German collaboration

Mittal began to import all the parts of the push-button phones in different cities of India and started an assembly line in a small garage.

Soon the government banned the import and gave the licence to seven big companies. Mittal couldn’t get one. Yet, instead of giving up he entered into cooperation with the German company Siemens. This was a turning point of his life, he remembers:

“What I learned was not only to manufacture the phones but what I learned was the great German discipline, great German manufacturing prowess and that really fired up my imagination, because this was the country from where one could pick up the ideas and technology and deploy it to India.”

Inspiration and innovation

This inspiration and technology paved Mittal's way to launch India’s first cordless phones, answering machines and fax machines. In 1994 Mittal got the licence for mobile phone operations in the capital, New Delhi. That was when an expert committee suggested that Delhi would need just 10,000 mobile phones. Mittal says:

“Delhi last week clocked 18 million phones in total of which five belong to my company. We have around 400 million phones in the country. My company has only 100 million.”

One cent a minute and less than two dollars a month are the rates of Airtel mobile. Mittal says that cheap telephony is needed in all parts of the world so that everybody can use a mobile.

Talking to Deutsche Welle in Kiel, Mittal said that he missed his childhood a lot, and his motto is: One should follow one's dreams, they do come true.

Author: Abha Mondhe
Editor: Grahame Lucas